*Discussion about various parts of the wiki is going on at [[Explain XKCD:Community portal]]. Share your 2¢!

*Discussion about various parts of the wiki is going on at [[Explain XKCD:Community portal]]. Share your 2¢!

−

*[[List of all comics]] contains a table of most recent xkcd comics and links to the rest, and the corresponding explanations. There are incomplete explanations listed [[:Category:Incomplete articles|here]]. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

+

*[[List of all comics]] contains a table of most recent xkcd comics and links to the rest, and the corresponding explanations. There are incomplete explanations listed [[:Category:Incomplete explanations|here]]. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

*If you see that a new comic hasn't been explained yet, you can create it: '''[[Help:How to add a new comic explanation|Here's how]]'''.

*If you see that a new comic hasn't been explained yet, you can create it: '''[[Help:How to add a new comic explanation|Here's how]]'''.

Latest comic

Title text: Our customers keep sending us their personal information, even though we've repeatedly asked them to stop. The EU told me I'm the heir to some ancient European throne that makes me exempt from the GDPR, but we should probably still try to fix that.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect:Created by THE KITCHEN SINK - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

This comic shows a meeting at Beret Guy's business (as seen in these other comics). As usual, those in the business demonstrate a misuse of business terminology and take strange happenings within the business in stride.

Though maintaining a semblance of business-savviness through the use of many corporate buzzwords, it becomes clear that what is normally metaphorical in a usual boardroom meeting is here quite likely meant literally. The Quarterly Reports, described as "looking good," may be literally physically attractive (rather than recording successful business dealings). Knowing Beret Guy, it seems likely that the office is full of coins or dollar bills, and not simply economically well-off.

Stocks (pillory?) are being manufactured.

Individual customers are experiencing physical growth, though most businesses would be more concerned with a growth in the number of customers supporting the business. If the customers are not children they are likely very concerned by this rapid growth.

The kitchen sink producing original content was not generating unique ideas or its own tv shows (commonly called original content), but instead leaking from the faucet (or possibly flooding from the sewer).

It is also worth noting that the "largest source of revenue" may not be producing much if any revenue at all; it can still be the biggest if there are no others. On the other hand, past experience with Beret Guy's business would indicate that this company is 1032: Networking making plenty of money, though they aren't necessarily sure 1493: Meeting how.

Transmuting lead into gold was a Nuclear transmutation#Alchemy goal of alchemists for many centuries. It is actually Nuclear transmutation now possible to accomplish transmutation of lead into gold, and gold into lead. Via modern nuclear methods, it is actually far easier to turn gold into lead than the reverse. While the expense far exceeds the value of the gold produced by such methods, it seems plausible that, given Beret Guy's surpassing strangeness, his company may be successfully and cheaply transmuting large quantities of lead into gold and back again. Since gold is worth much more than lead in today's market, the first transmutation could indeed result in major profit, while the reverse would obviously result in major losses, and be a rather pointless undertaking for a typical, profit-oriented business.

In the last panel, "the girl from The Ring" refers to Sadako Yamamura, the antagonist of the Ring series by Koji Suzuki, who has been referenced by xkcd several times in the past as in 396: The Ring. Beret Guy claims she has made several appearances in their video conferences, which may be possible if someone has hacked their video feed to play footage from the 2002 movie. However, some of Beret Guy's employees then proceed to remark that she has made contributions to the meetings in question, implying that the image of Yamamura is not only alive but sentient and communicating with the employees, a possibility that, if accurate, is accepted with surprising nonchalance by Beret Guy's employees. It's also possible that Yamamura is simply the recording from the series, and her contributions are just in keeping with the general tone of the company's video conferences. Either way, it would appear that Beret Guy's sheer eccentricity has affected his staff to the point that a digital spectre would not be an abnormal employee.

The title text refers to the May 25 deadline to implement the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); this comic parodies a business meeting about what the company is doing to prepare for it. However, while normally the problem would be how to handle the customers' personal information that the company requires to retain in order to do business, in this case it seems the company does not require personal information at all, and instead, customers are sending them theirs on their own. Even more bizarrely, Beret Guy was told by the EU (or at least he thinks he was told by the EU) that he is exempt because he is royalty of some kind (though, of course, such exemption is not a real part of GDPR), but he wants to do it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Transcript

[Beret Guy, Ponytail, Hairy, Hairbun and Megan sit around a table, left to right. Beret Guy and Megan are sitting on chairs at the ends. All others are behind the table with no visible chairs. All characters face Beret Guy]

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes, memes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

List of all comics contains a table of most recent xkcd comics and links to the rest, and the corresponding explanations. There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

If you see that a new comic hasn't been explained yet, you can create it: Here's how.

Rules

Don't be a jerk. There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to —and helping everyone better understand— xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

Tools

It seems you are using noscript, which is stopping our project wonderful ads from working. Explain xkcd uses ads to pay for bandwidth, and we manually approve all our advertisers, and our ads are restricted to unobtrusive images and slow animated GIFs. If you found this site helpful, please consider whitelisting us.